1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to information monitoring technologies in the context of real-time network or Internet communication, and in particular to a method and system for monitoring real-time communication on a computer network between at least two client computers connected by the network.
2. Description of Related Art
The seminal importance of the Internet as a generalized communication medium has been clear from the very outset. As the Internet has surged in popularity, however, it has begun manifesting itself in nontraditional ways, the scope of which had never been fully anticipated. In particular, with the exponential rise in the number of Internet users, real-time Web based interaction, such as seen in Internet Chat, has emerged as an amazingly popular and persuasive mode of communication.
On the Internet, the term chatting is used to refer to the act of “talking” by text or graphical communication to other people who are using the Internet at the same time. Typically, chatting involves the broadcast, multicast, or unicast of messages, typed in real-time, among a group of users occupying the same space or channel (i.e., connected to the same server or related group of servers) on the Internet. The users themselves may be situated in different geographical locales and may be connected using any number of different client programs, browsers, or Internet service providers (ISPs). The key point is that a single Internet site (the “chat site”) serves as a common repository for all messages. Chats may be ongoing, or scheduled, and users may enter and leave the chat site at will.
Typically, most chats are focused on a particular topic or theme. A given chat site may be a host to multiple chats, each corresponding to a different theme yet taking place at the same time in different “chat rooms”—which are essentially specialized sub-domains within the broader chat-site. Hence, participants within the same chat-room generally share some common interest or concern, which brings them together.
Chats may be hosted by online services (such as America Online), by bulletin board services and by Web sites. Many Web sites, such as Talk City, in fact exist exclusively for the purpose of conducting chats. Most chat sites use a popular protocol called Internet Relay Chat (IRC) for client-server handshaking and subsequent client-server and client—client interaction. IRC was first made public in RFC 1459, released in May 1993. Besides the exchange of text messages, a chat may also include the use of sound and graphics, provided that the bandwidth capability and appropriate programming are accessible. Currently, most chat activity appears to be informal and recreational in nature. However, specialized channels where professionals exchange valuable opinions and engage in constructive dialogue are becoming increasingly prevalent.
Since, by its very nature, the content of chats is generated in real-time, it is very difficult, if not impossible to be able to classify the nature of the content exchanged in chat rooms in advance of joining the chat. Even though current chat servers attempt to classify their chat rooms using general heuristics such as “Adult”, “Teenagers”, “Kids” and the like, and to cluster rooms accordingly, the actual content exchanged within a given room is by no means guaranteed to conform to its predefined classification. The situation becomes even more complex when chat content includes non-text data, for example, audio or images. Surrounding text does not always indicate the content of the embedded file, allowing offensive audio or image material to slip through the ratings system. Occasionally, people deliberately even mislabel offensive audio or image files in order to mislead monitoring devices.
Content rating for static web pages, and also for dynamic pages (e.g., search result pages) is already done using various techniques. These include Internet filters such as Net Nanny and Cyber Patrol, and the method and system disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/374,644, entitled “Automatic” Rating and Filtering of Data Files for Objectionable Content.”
Even though Internet chat is increasingly being used by people as a form of informal communication, no general technique has been developed which can use a uniform criteria to provide an objective and accurate rating for the content exchanged during such discourse in real-time, and which can subsequently manifest as an Internet portal for chat rooms clustered according to such ratings. Since the content of chat rooms (or any other such form of Internet based real-time communication) is highly dynamic, even if static ratings are specified for such rooms, there is no guarantee that the static rating is actually representative of the content (i.e., text or graphics) currently being exchanged. Moreover, any classification which may be provided by the chat-host server are often very subjective, and such classifications are not comparable across multiple hosts, since the classification criteria may vary from source to source. Hence there is the compelling need for a service that can dynamically deduce ratings of objectionable or other type material in real-time and which uses a standardized, uniform rating criteria, such that comparison among ratings is meaningful.
Bearing in mind the problems and deficiencies of the prior art, it is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a method of monitoring real-time communication on a computer network between at least two client computers connected by the network.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a method of monitoring real-time communication between client computers over a network which establishes a uniform rating system.
A further object of the invention is to provide a real-time rating system for users of Internet chat rooms which alerts the users of objectionable material prior to joining the chat.
Still other objects and advantages of the invention will in part be obvious and will in part be apparent from the specification.